Culture as Propaganda: Early-Cold War Memories

The below interview cited at: Exclusive: The Paris Review, the Cold War and the CIA: Letters discovered by Salon show even deeper Cold War ties between the Paris Review and a U.S. propaganda front - Joel Whitney, Salon: (Via ACP III on Facebook)

Conversations from Penn State Episode 203 [undated]: Peter Matthiessen: "SHOW OPEN SATALIA: He’s a renowned novelist nature writer environmental activist and Zen master. The New York Times Book Review calls him 'one of our greatest modern nature writers.' Peter Matthiessen has written more than 30 books and is one of the few American writers ever to win a National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction. He has traveled to the far reaches of South America Asia and Africa. This past October he visited Penn State as a guest lecturer for the Rock Ethics Institute. We talked with him about the inspiration behind his work his travels and about the only adventure he’s ever regretted. Here’s our conversation with Peter Matthiessen ... MATTHIESSEN: ... [W]hen I was in in Yale University my favorite professor conscripted me in the CIA. As you know he said this is your patriotic duty. Well my girlfriend and I we were actually we met in Paris and then we got married and I didn't have a job and this was offered to me. I was a green horn. I didn’t  have any politics at all. I was just a Yalie. You know but they said we will send you back to Paris because Paris was in the middle of all the ferment that happened in the beginning of the Cold War. And the CIA then was very new. It was just coming out of the OSS [link from JB] and it didn't have this very ugly history of assassination and stuff that later got into. And then but even so and also I was writing my first novel. So I was my cover. So SATALIA: Working in Paris and creating the Paris Review which was what you did in your mid-twenties. MATTHIESSEN: Yeah the Paris Review [link from JB]. That augmented my cover but that's how the Paris Review began. And but then right in the middle of my first assignment I knew I was dealing with Communist French Communist people and I said these guys. They are humorless and wrong headed but they are honest. They are committed. I just didn't we were at home the same time we were having those witch hunts you know Communist witch hunts which were awful very ugly and I said I am on the wrong side here. I really got I got politicized but the other way. So I finally went to my bosses and said you know I am not on your side anymore. You can’t. SATALIA: In fact you said that two years with the CIA was the adventure the one adventure in your life that you regretted. MATTHIESSEN: The only adventure in my paltry career as a spy in Paris yeah. SATALIA: And and during this time your ... cofounder of the Paris Review Howard Hume he had no idea that you were that you were undercover for the CIA. MATTHIESSEN: No. Well I wasn't legally permitted to tell him you know. I did I did finally but I waited about ten years and then I still wasn't legally permitted but I did anyway. I didn't think anybody would care by that time."